MATT ESTELA REEL

ANDREW DAFFY REEL

tHoC - showreel credits

MUSIC

• BLAMMA BLAMMA - Carry me home

INTRO

• KIM JONES fashion show film edit
• CHEMICAL BROTHERS salmon dance
• BO IN THE USA titles, vfx, stings & dvd menus

STUDIO

• DISCOVERY CHANNEL michael lau
• QWEST fortune 500
• WONDER PERFORMANCE duck campaign
• NESTEA leon the chameleon
• FIVE FWD gadgets
• ING credit card
• BAGGY TROUSERS pilot
• EASISINGLES little boy
• A BEARS CHRISTMAS TAIL titles
• KIM JONES fashion show film edit
• LOSING HER dream sequence
• SWIVEL HEAD TED work so far
  

FREELANCE

• PALOOK swan lake -  studio aka
• HUGO BOSS underneath it all -  finish
  
• LEXUS drips - finish
• BMW its only a car - finish
• BA ease -  glassworks
  
• BUPA kisses - finish
• ORANGE origami -  mill
  
• FORD birds -  framestore
  
• HISCOX superstition -  framestore
  
• CHEMICAL BROTHERS salmon dance -  framestore
  

The smallest 8 inch heels ever recorded
EUROPRIDE - pufff (REMASTERED)
Europride Pufff directed by Richard Hickey and Andrew Daffy is our proudest moment to date. It represents the nature of work we’d ideally be doing 24/7. Quirky, edgy and a bit of glitz and glamour. It was done under extremely limited circumstances, yet film crews, international drag queens, audio genuises (i?) and one top producer came together to make it what it is.

Although it seems that Richard and I have been working on this little thing for months, it’s only been a matter of weeks. As well as doing the CGI as per usual, we were thrilled as a studio to take some extra reigns in terms of editing, digital cinematography and final compositing.
You can see a Youtube HD version at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4tVpZlmBUM

We have reems of funny footage which we’ll turn into a podcast, but for now here’s a clip of me prepping for the role…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HJdkY0FoUs
PRESS
UPDATE - 4th JUNE 2009 : DIGITAL ARTS - Interview
http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=12734
UPDATE - 29th MAY 2009 : CREATIVITY LINK
http://creativity-online.com/work/view?seed=8cfc667f
UPDATE - 28th MAY 2009 : BOARDSMAG ‘TOP SPOT’
http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/tvfilm/7629
UPDATE - 28th MAY 2009 : CG CHANNEL LINK
http://www.cgchannel.com/
UPDATE - 26th MAY 2009 : MOTIONOGRAPHER WRITE UP
http://motionographer.com/2009/05/26/europride-pufff/
UPDATE - 21st MAY 2009 : MENTION ON FEED
http://www.feedhere.com/?p=4393

Credits
Directed by Richard Hickey and Andrew Daffy
Produced by Clare Spencer - Grasshopper Films
Post produced by Andrew Daffy - The House of Curves
Edited, Prevized, Modelled, Animated, Lit & Composited by Andrew Daffy
Technical Director - Matt Estela - The House of Curves
Birdcage model - Xavier Roig
DOP - Adam Frisch
1st AD - Andy Cameron
Art Director - James Hatt
Lyrics by Richard Hickey & Andrew Daffy
Storyboard Artist - Laurie Proud
Sound Engineer - Sam Ashwell  - 750mph
Sound Producer - Syleste Molyneaux  - 750mph
TK using Resolve - Adrian Seery - Rushes
Agency Creative - Adrian Egger - TBWA, Zurich
Account Director - Philipp Sattelmeyer - TBWA, Zurich
TV Producer - Daniela Berther - TBWA, Zurich
Client - Michael Rueegg - Europride

Cast
Voice Artist - Richard Laing
Husband - Richard Woolnough
Wife - Hilary Field

Other Crew
Production assistant - George Nelson
Runner - Phil O’Conner
Runner - Brian Fairbairn
Focus Puller - Charlie Herranz
Grip - Pete Nash
DIT - Tom Mitchell
Gaffer - Fred Todd
Electrician - Dave Nye
Art Director Assistant - Ben Lack
Art Director Assistant - Sam Waters
Art Director Assistant - Emma Svensson
Make up Artist - Emma Sherry
On set costume designer - Lori Land

Inspired by Dusty ‘O’, Tasty Tim and the Trannyshack team

tHoC hardware and software
Workstations/Renderfarm - Dell workstations
Workstations/Renderfarm - Apple Mac Workstations
Renderfarm - Apple Mac Mini’s
Wacom Cintiq Tablet

tHoC production
3D software - Autodesk Maya 2009
Renderers - Mental Ray (built into maya)
Texturing/concept - Adobe Photoshop CS3
Rigging software - The Setup Machine 2
Facial Animation - Blendshape Combination System (BCS)
UV pelt software - Sunit Parekh’s Pelting Tool
Davina Hair - Carpaint shader (high end 3d)

tHoC Finishing
Compositing/Editing software - Adobe After Effects CS3
Depth of Field - Frischluft
Glows and flares - Starglow

tHoC Management
Renderfarm manager - Frantic Films - Deadline
Shot/notes progress - Googledocs

ATLANTIS blogged by Andrew Daffy

I’ve recently had the opportunity to work on a commercial for the hotel Atlantis situated in the Bahamas for HSI’s Brett Ratner (X Men 3 and Rush Hour). It involved me flying out to the Bahamas for a few weeks and then onto LA for the post.

A youtube making of can be found here…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCW2C7pv648

I hope you enjoy both the VFX edit of the spot as well as the name-droppy blurb below.

The idea behind the commercial called for the guests of the Atlantis to transform into various forms of sea life. Manta Rays, dolphins and other fish. It was decided early on to avoid the classic ‘morph’ look adopted in 90’s pop video’s and we explored the idea of hiding transformation within editing, camera moves and lots of bubbles. Whilst in the Bahamas before the shoot, I spent lots of time upfront reworking some the ideas in the boards and previsualising shots.

I think the most successful shot features the family of dolphins turning into a human family. The original boards  had it morphing in camera, but I found it punchier having them go overhead during the transformation.

The commercial was shot by Darius Khondji, a movie legend. He was the cinematographer on some incredible projects such as Delicatesson, Se7en and Evita. All anxiety about meeting him was immediately quashed in seconds when his infectious, beautiful warm personality shone through.

This is our underwater cameraman Pete Zuccarini (Pirates of the Caribbean) who shot within the ocean, quays and enormous tanks surrounding the Atlantis Hotel. The Canon 5D with waterproof casing, and corrective spherical glass proved invaluable to achieve the amazing fluid and dynamic shots.  The sequence of shots below show his favourite party trick, blowing a series of bubble rings, and then swimming through them!

The end sequence with the swimmers in the pool was choreographed by Frank Gatson (Beyonce - Single Ladies).

It was a real pleasure to work with the team at Mill LA on the job. They looked after me very graciously and did a lovely job on the ad

Dan Prince, our intern at tHoC flew out to LA to lend a hand, he did a really nice job texturing the crab for the restaurant scene. The shot was composited by Mill London’s Peter Hodsman aka Shakey Pete (but soon to be rename nukey Pete?)

ATLANTIS - Transformed
The Manta Rays were textured, lit and rendered by Senior Artist Jamie O’Hara, but the model came from The House of Curves’ own Loretta Okoh. She’s currently studying with us, and we’d fortuitously been working on a Manta Ray model before the Atlantis job came along! She did a beautiful job of the model and has since done some texturing of her own which can be seen in this quicktime.

I should also extend my thanks to Wael Binali www.waelbinali.com who allowed me to use his beautiful music for the VFX edit of the spot. I hope I can work with him on something soon. I think I’m a fan.

After being awarded the job by SINGLETON, OGILVY AND MATHER in Australia, UNDERPANTS director and flame operator Paul Freeman got to creating concept sketches for Leon. Daffy designed a polygon layout by drawing directly over the sketches, and sent these blueprints to modelling superstar Ulf Lundgren at LOST LINER in Sweden.

Maya plugin ‘The Setup Machine’ was used upfront to generate an animatable rig as early as possible. This meant client and director approvals were based on a walking moving character rather than a static form, giving a better representation of Leon in his final performing state.

NESTEA - leon the chameleon

The ‘walking approvals’ flagged changes much earlier than would otherwise have happened, like his tail getting in the way of his walking, arms becoming more defined, extra wrinkles around major joints and so forth. Leon’s surface qualities also went through regular approvals and checks, moving towards a more limey and saturated skin rather than the mottled appearance he started with.

NESTEA - leon the chameleon

For the wrinkles Estela decided to use Maya’s new ‘nucleus’ technology. The setup consisting of two copies of Leon, a rigid skin version, and a floppy skin version glued to the surface of the rigid skin. By painting the strength of ‘glue’ on different parts of Leon’s body, it was possible to have saggy skin for his jowls and shoulders, while the skin on his head would stay tight and fixed. The result was a system that became foolproof through to the end. As animation came in, we could process the ’skin’ to shake naturally.
‘It made difficult areas to rig very easy, as well as offering a spooky-real looking motion, impossible to achieve by hand.’

NESTEA - leon the chameleon

Early animation tests were done at tHoC, final animation was carried out in New Zealand by Glenn Wilson with some shots done by Carlos Rosas.

Aaron Grove at tHoC was responsible for getting the passes working together, automated, and rendering as fast as possible. He used Maya 2008’s convoluted ‘frame buffering’ system* to enable the calculation of the displacements to happen just once per frame at render time, but would use that calculation to spit out the many passes that went into making the Chameleon look as rich as he does in the final.

NESTEA - leon the chameleon

No sooner than the frames rendered through our farm via Deadline, they were were being picked up by PERCEPTUAL, who could see the contents of our system externally and could monitor the progress. Lots of allnighters and 8000 frames later, and a lot of manipulation of the passes, Paul delivered four very lovely commercials which have had massive airplay in Australia.

SINGLETON, OGILVY AND MATHER
Creative Director - Gordon Higgins

UNDERPANTS
Director - Paul Freeman

PERCEPTUAL ENGINEERING
Post Producer - Rebekah Hay
Animation - Glenn Wilson & Carlos Rosas

tHoC
CGI Supervisors - Andrew Daffy & Matt Estela
TD - Aaron Grove

LOST LINER
Modelling, UV Mapping, Texturing - Ulf Lundgren

*This convoluted system has now been replaced with a very usable system in Maya 2009.

BULLETIN : CATHY MURRAY STARTS HER LONG ANTICIPATED STUDIO ZOO

BULLETIN : ANOTHER GREAT POSTER JUST OUT BY GREYSCALEGORILLA’s

In September 2008, Imagine Magazine released our 2 sided poster, aimed at giving animation students a helping hand with their studies and some advice whilst they prepare for their careers within the industry.

We’re delighted to announce that the full pdf document is now finished and available for downloading.
The full resolution posters are also available.

We’d like to thank FRANK GRIMSHAW editor of Imagine Magazine, for making us follow this through, Cathy Murray at Studio Zoo for laying out the poster in such a clear and attractive way, as well as JAKOB SCHUH of Studio Soi for the amazing illustrations.

SUGGESTIONS / FEEDBACK
If you think we’ve left out a CRUCIAL tip that should be added to version 2.0 of our pdf OR if you have any feedback OR spot any typo’s we’d love to hear from you.  Please let us know at tips@thehouseofcurves.com

TIPS FOR STUDENTS - PDF


TIPS POSTER - SIDE A - DURING STUDY

TIPS POSTER - SIDE B - GETTING WORK

We were given the challenge to generate a realistic looking cloud using Autodesk’s Maya.

It needed to cover lots of bases, combining the physical qualities of large clouds in the sky, with a more localised scale for the boy and his scale. Carving the subtle faces out of the clouds was the toughest challenge.

Matt Estela notes ‘The nature of our process is such that we create hard cloud shaped objects with which we emit the spongy cloud from. It gives us lovely looking clouds, buts softens off fine details crucial for facial expression. So amongst the many passes of the  cloud shape, we generated a ‘face pass’ which was a cheat face which was merely textured as cloud, in order to give us more control. This was used very lightly in compositing’.

The 3D renders were composited at Finish by Jason Watts and Steve Murgatroyd.

Stink
Director - Ben Hawkins
Producer - Ben Croker

Finish
Post Producer - Fiona Kilroe
Flame - Jason Watts & Steve Murgatroyd

tHoC Credits
CGI Supervision - Matt Estela and Andrew Daffy
TD’s - Aaron Grove, Phinnaeus OConnor & Helena Masand

LINK TO STUDIO AKA’S VARMINTS

Varmints has been nominated for ‘Best Short Animation’ in this years Bafta’s, to be held at the Royal Opera House on Sunday 8th February. All of our fondest regards and wishes go to Marc Craste, Sue Goffe and the amazing artists at Studio AKA.

The film is an adaptation of the book created by Mark Craste and Helen Ward. tHoC team Daffy, Matt and Anna Kubik worked closely with Marc over three intensive months sculpting story, shaping the varmints world, filming long CGI camera takes of the basic but key character performances, which acted as a guide for the rest of the production.  Unlike a shot-by-shot based previs that is the norm, tHoC largely designed sequences as a single ‘performance’, covering the sequences from multiple cameras. This allowed Marc the ability to treat the editing of the previs almost as a live action editor might.

The choice of having the hero deliver long consistent takes also meant that sets were completely accurate and efficiently utilised; animators could deliver an entire performance as opposed to having to break their work into shots, characters could walk to any part of the digital environments and not drop into an empty void or impossible spaces. Again this allowed much greater freedom for Marc.

Marc comments about our collaboration:
“I very much wanted a team for the previs who would contribute ideas -
story ideas, staging ideas, lighting ideas. Not least because Varmints
was a very loosely sketched story at the start of the production and
needed this sort of input to pull it together. Preferably things should
be a lot tighter on a production like this, but sometimes due to
scheduling and budget considerations these things are unavoidable. What
I needed was a team who could cope with the sometimes vague, sometimes
non-existent direction and see it not as a liability but more as a
chance to shape the film. Often a meeting to discuss staging of a
sequence became a story meeting in which the original idea was tossed in
the bin and something new was developed. Of course this sort of thing
can quickly spiral out of control. But the central concept was fairly
solid so I always felt it was a process that did nothing but improve the
film. Although two major sequences were previsualised and then
ultimately dropped from the edit, a crucial element to the film - (the
tree that is at the heart of the story ) came out of these improvised
story meetings.
Parts of the film were storyboarded. Parts had only a couple of sketches
as a guide. And then there were parts of the film done from scratch
during the previs. Very often I was presented with multiple takes of
scenes within a sequence. Then I’d have the luxury of picking and
choosing those takes which I felt best sat together. Sometimes an extra
shot would be added, or perhaps a new idea would surface, a different
way of realising the action that was simply too good to ignore and so
the whole sequence would be redone. Along with story-telling skills,
cinematographic skills, and all the other skills that go with
previsualising, I think patience was probably the most essential
requirement. Hopefully the finished film will be worth all the hard
work.”

Credits:
Writer, Designer, Director: Marc Craste
Producer: Sue Goffe
Production Company / Animation Studio : Studio AKA
Previs team at tHoC: Andrew Daffy, Matt Estela, Anna Kubik

It’s been a long time coming, and thanks to Wonder Performance bread, BMF Australia, Flying Fish and Perceptual Engineering both in New Zealand, its happened… Daffy finally gets to do some DUCKS.
The challenge was to create 2 convincing viral spots for a campaign for Wonder Bread.

The concept being that the above little clips of ducks doing extraordinary things would find themselves going around the ‘youtube’ and ‘milk and cookie’ type sites, before an official announcement spot aired on National TV in Australia expressing concerns for people feeding them this ’super’ bread.

27 Million Views later and the surfing duck has become a phenomenon!

We were hired by VFX boutique Perceptual Engineering in New Zealand to attend the duck shoot and supply 3D ducks flying in formation. Rebekah Hay post produced and it was put together in Flame by Paul Freeman.